


Provision for the flesh

by acaramelmacchiato



Category: Don Carlos | Don Carlo - Verdi/du Locle/Méry
Genre: M/M, carlos is so thirsty can't someone help him, weird history fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 22:26:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4582407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acaramelmacchiato/pseuds/acaramelmacchiato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carlos has loved Rodrigo his whole life and no one in this story finds it creepy except him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Provision for the flesh

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zdenka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zdenka/gifts).



At the age of eleven, Carlos was brought to the hunting lodge of Torre de la Parada, and introduced with great ceremony to the Marquis of Posada’s son.

“Carlos, you are much alone here,” said his father, and brought him forward with a strong hand on his shoulder. “And my cousin has an excellent remedy. Here is his son Rodrigo, who is near about your age, come to be your companion.”

Carlos was a prince and newly the heir to the throne of Spain, set above all others in Europe. But this new acquaintance made him feel inadequate, ordinary and common. Rodrigo did not appear to be his age at all, but had the posture and proportions of adulthood. His legs were long and hard-muscled, and his head was held high. He was dressed richly, in blackwork cuffs and dark voided velvet, and in the whole of his refined appearance, only his gaze was hot with boredom.

“Sir,” Carlos said, and cleared his throat after his voice came too close to cracking. “Welcome to La Parada. I am happy for your company. We will amuse ourselves well here.”

“Your Royal Highness,” said Rodrigo, and at last he inclined his head. “I await your pleasure.”

Six years later, when they were inseparable friends, it would occur to Carlos to masturbate to this memory.

 

* * *

 

“Do you believe that fate can miscast us?” Carlos asked one evening over a game of Minchiate.

Rodrigo looked at his cards, and set them down, and looked at Carlos. “I believe that any man may be dealt a poor hand, but there are less heretical ways to forfeit the game.”

Carlos laughed. “Take up your cards again, I am only speculating.”

“Oh good,” said Rodrigo drily. “Let us speculate about religion.” 

“I mean that I am not made to be a prince. My father believes this with all his heart, and this morning said that the best I may do for him is to marry us peace with France. Men will not follow me, or will not trust me.”

Rodrigo reached across the small card table to put his hand on Carlos’s forearm. The dark light of the sunset made the spinels that closed his collar glitter.

“My dear friend,” said Rodrigo. “Think of the loyalty that is shown to you from all sides. Europe has put its hopes on you as an excellent prince and a humanist, and I hope you do not consider yourself poor in friends, when I myself would die for you in an instant.”

Carlos looked at the cards. “You give me comfort,” he said, “and I will believe from you what I do not from any of the courtiers here.”

“Of course,” said Rodrigo, and withdrew his hand with a smile. “I am so much smarter than they are.” 

 

* * *

 Carlos loved Rodrigo for his familiarity, his wit, and all of his skills, but he repented to God for how he looked at his friend and how, alone at night, he would think of him.

“I am steeped in sin,” he confessed to his priest. “I have an unbridled lust. I am a liar. I have made one dear to me believe that my conversation and my laughter and my embraces are only meant in friendship, and it is so cruel a lie I am sick from it.”

The priest laughed, and Carlos could hear a smile. “It is not such a sin as you think, in a young man, and it may be that the lady returns your affection.”

Carlos blinked. It had not occurred that he should repent also for desiring sodomy. He judged that he did not feel sorry for it, and would not be shriven.

“It is no affection. Affection I reserve for the friendship which I value so highly. But I have two faces. My sins are mortal, not youthful, I should be content to admire h -- to admire _her_ , but I desire her to obsession and to cruelty. I want grotesquely. I want her future dimmed so she turns to me. I want her castle burned so she will take refuge at my court. I want her friends to turn away, for her never to dare to marry, for her family to die. I want her to love me and no other.”

“My dear young prince,” said the priest. “Youth is such a challenge, and all we who are mortal in this long _vallis lacrimarum_ most endure its strangeness. Are you sorry for your sins?"

“I am,” said Carlos, thinking,  _For most of them_ .

“Then I absolve you of them. And see if the young lady will take you to bed, hmm? You may be surprised. Go now, and be of better cheer.”

That night the Marquis of Posada died.

At his funeral mass Rodrigo wept, and it hurt Carlos to see him.

“I shall style myself the Marquis of Posa,” said Rodrigo when the mass had ended, “as the French have always written it. It is less a name, for I am less than my father. But more importantly,” he smiled, and had collected himself, “it is easier to spell.”

Carlos put his hand on Rodrigo’s shoulder. “If I can make your unhappiness easier to bear, everything I own is at your disposal,” he said. “Let me prove it to you -- you must come live at court, and never be lonely or in need.”

Rodrigo turned his head. “I will go to Hungary,” he said. “Or Bavaria, or the Low Countries, or the Balearic Islands. Somewhere where there is fighting.”

“Then I will follow you.”

Rodrigo laughed. “You are a more generous prince than we deserve, and I love you for it, but you know it is impossible.”

Rodrigo left Madrid the next morning, and for years Carlos did not see him, and did penance. For Carlos was a great prince, and he had wished a man dead, and the man had died. 

 

* * *

 During these years he heard from everyone that the new Marquis of Posa was the handsomest man in Spain, and France, and Flanders, and Portugal, and as he traveled those nations were left bereft of him. Even enemies of Spain and Rome loved Rodrigo exceptionally well, and the Ottoman admiral Piali Pasha had been heard across that empire praising the young knight for his courage and forethought and the fine shape of his legs.

Whenever Carlos heard these compliments penitence deserted him, and he took himself in his own hand, thinking of Rodrigo’s thighs in black silk hose, at his father’s funeral mass. Rodrigo smiling at him and saying, _You are a more generous prince than we deserve, and I love you for it._ Carlos came turbulently in his fist, and tried to regret it.

A shallow and contextless pain afflicted him, which prayer could not abate. It ran him down sometimes like a pack of dogs, and he would not leave his bed except by his father’s order.

Elisabeth of Valois broke like dawn into the night that had overcome him. He felt no evil for her, no grotesque things, for all she was his father’s wife he loved her kindly, so despite his situation he was a better man in her presence, and separation from her hurt him so much that he refuged himself in the monastery at Yuste, where his grandfather had died.

He wandered the cloister, and watched the sun behind the umbrella pines, and prayed to God that his suffering would be resolved.

And then Rodrigo returned from Flanders.

His first stop in all of Spain, it seemed, was Yuste, for he arrived with mud liberally painted on his boots, and his horse tired and thirsty. Even for the road he was dressed attractively, in shot silk of true black and steel gray, his habits unchanged by time and fighting.

“I have returned,” said Rodrigo, without giving a reason. “And across Spain there are rumors that you are unhappy.”

Carlos embraced him, and felt the heat of his body after the long ride through the silk. “They are true, and I will explain. But I have missed you, and heard so much of you. You have made an impression on all of our enemies.”

Rodrigo grimaced. “It’s easily done,” he said. “All you have to do is fight them.”

Carlos gripped his elbow. “I am so happy you are home,” he said. The gardens of Yuste were in late summer, with only the lemon trees to perfume them, and Rodrigo smelled of sweat and his horse, and the familiar longing returned to Carlos in a rush. He stepped back.

“Come and take some refreshment,” he said, and felt the lingering warmth leave him. “In one respect I am not abstaining here, the monastery is better-provisioned than any alcazar in Spain.”

“I have heard,” said Elisabeth the next week to the king, “that the Marquis of Posa has arrived back at court.”

“And not a moment too soon,” said Philip. “See how much less gloomy our prince is. That man has a way with my son like some have with horses.”


End file.
